Introduction

Education Act 1989, Sections 75 and 76

Except to the extent that any enactment or the general law of New Zealand provides otherwise, a school’s board has complete discretion to control the management of the school as it thinks fit.

s.76 Principals –

(1) A school’s principal is the board’s chief executive in relation to the school’s control and management.

(2) Except to the extent that any enactment or the general law of New Zealand provides otherwise, the principal –

Shall comply with the board’s general policy directions; and

Subject to paragraph (a) of this subsection, has complete discretion to manage as the principal thinks fit the school’s day to day administration.

Governance

The Kaikohe East School board emphasises strategic leadership rather than administrative detail, has a clear distinction between board and staff roles, concentrates on the future rather than the past or present, and is pro-active rather than reactive.

Management

The board delegates all authority and accountability for the day-to-day operational organisation of the school to the principal.

The School and its Community

Kaikohe East School is a contributing school with a roll of approximately 210, of which approximately 98% are Maori. Kaikohe East School teaches children from Year 0 to Year 6. All students are taught the New Zealand National Curriculum.

The school provides high quality educational opportunities for its students.

The school is pleasantly sited and well resourced. Staff, board members, and parents are very supportive of the work of the school.

Kaikohe East School has a number of sporting resources (swimming pool, playing fields, sealed court areas and two adventure playgrounds)

National Education Priorities

Kaikohe East School recognizes the government’s National Education Priorities:

National priorities are:

To provide success for all.

To provide a safe physical and emotional environment for students.

To provide opportunities for success in all the essential learning and essential skill areas of the New Zealand Curriculum.

To improve literacy and numeracy.

To develop a range of assessment and evidence gathering practices that provides sufficiently comprehensive data to evaluate the progress and achievement of students and to form future teaching and learning programmes.

To develop and implement teaching programmes aimed at improving outcomes for students who are not achieving, or who are at risk of not achieving, or who have special needs.

To improve the achievement of Maori students.

To report to students and parents on achievement of individual students, and to the community on groups of students and the students as a whole.

The school integrates the National Educational Goals and National Education Priorities at governance and operational levels by giving them full consideration when planning school developments or school/class programmes.

Cultural Diversity

When developing policies and practices for the school every endeavour is made to reflect New Zealand Cultural diversity and the unique position of Maori culture.

Te Reo

Parents may choose to enrol their children in the General classes, or the Bilingual classes.

The General classes have all their instruction in English. They also have some Maori Language instruction covering simple commands and greetings, and basic pronunciation.

Bilingual classes have up to 30-50% of their instruction in Maori.

A Kaiarahi i te Reo is also employed to support Bilingual class programmes.

Due to the high proportion of Maori students our school takes the opportunity to support and practise Maori protocol when appropriate and necessary.

Procedural Information

The planning year for the board will be from 1 January to 31 December. The updated charter and annual report will be lodged with the Ministry of Education by July 1 each year along with the consultation plan.

Variance Report 2010

Goal 1 (literacy) By the end of the year at least 66% of year 6 children will be reading at or above the school reading age target of PM level 27 – 28 (10 – 11 year reading age)

Rationale

We want to know that our children are leaving our school with a level of reading that will allow them to participate at year 7 – 8.

We have chosen year 6 because we are aware that, at entry, many of our pupils have limited language skills and few have pre school education. By the end of the 6th year, however, we believe we can overcome the earlier setbacks and attain levels comparable to national averages.

What happened.

Systems to gather information were put in place and a calendar developed so the data could be analysed and reported to the BOT. We decided on

STAR for year 3 – 6 reading,

asTTle for year 3 – 6 written language (recount)

running records for all reading

exemplars for years 1 and 2 writing

At the end of the year it was decided that we didn’t get enough information from STAR so we are changing to asTTle for pupils working at or above level 2b in 2011.

Goal 2 (numeracy) By the end of the year at least 50% of year 6 children will be working at or above stage 5 (EA) as measured by the cluster Place Value test.

Rationale

It is the school’s belief that understanding of place value is the “skeleton of maths”.

Place Value testing in February showed that only 8 year 6 pupils (19%) could work at stage 5 (Early Additive level) in understanding number and that the bulk (81%) were at stage 4 or below..

We have chosen year 6 because we are aware that, at entry, many of our pupils have limited number knowledge and few have pre school education. By the end of the 6th year, however, we believe we can overcome the earlier setbacks and attain levels comparable to national averages.

Monitoring and reporting.

In February, 19% of our year 6 pupils were working at or above stage 5 (Early additive) according to the results of our cluster place value test.

We took our children for another test in early November and made comparisons only between those pupils who were at school for both tests.

By November, 17 of the 35 pupils (49%) achieved 10/10 and 9 pupils (26%)scored 9/10. We consider this equates to being able to work at stage5 or early additive.

According to the test therefore, 75% of pupils tested are working at stage5 or above. This is better than the goal we set ourselves.

Boys were marginally better in the first test with 62% of those scoring 9 or 10 correct being boys but the end of year test was 50- 50. The bottom 10 were also 50-50 boys and girls.

While it was not mentioned in our goals, the figures do show a significant drop in very low achievers. 8 pupils correctly answered 6 or less questions in term 1 with some scoring none at all. By term 4 no pupils scored none at all and the lowest scores were from 3 pupils who scored 5 correct.

Next steps - adjust goals to reflect results

Amendment Required by the Ministry of Education

"...[T]arget:

1. Kaikohe East
School will collect base-line student
achievement data against National

Standards for all year levels

for Reading,

Writing and Mathematics

. ...

2. The board will develop its aims,
directions, objectives, priorities and targets for the management of the school’s
and board’s capability, resources, assets, and liabilities, including human
resources, finances, property and other ownership matters.

3.

The board will develop its aims, directions, objectives, priorities and targets

for meeting general government policy objectives for all schools as set out or referred

to in the National Education Guidelines and specific policy objectives applying

to the school."

Note:

In the absence of quotation marks to separate the text of the required amendment from the text of the Ministry letter it has been presumed that the requirement to "include the following target" refers to the italicised parts of the three indented and numbered statements that follow the word "target".